U-Haul reports most one-way rentals went to Texas last year

Texas gained the most new residents from one-way U-Haul rentals in 2023 for the third straight year, the company reported this week.

The annual report on 2.5 million one-way U-Haul truck, trailer and U-Box moving container rentals in the U.S. and Canada found most do-it-yourself movers relocated from the West Coast, Midwest and Northeast to Southern states.

The findings appeared to echo multiple reports that show more Americans migrating to more affordable, lockdown-light areas since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“While one-way transactions in 2023 remained below the record-breaking levels we witnessed immediately following the pandemic, we continued to see many of the same geographical trends from U-Haul customers moving between states,” said John “J.T.” Taylor, U-Haul International president.

According to the company, 50.4% of all one-way U-Haul traffic in Texas arrived there last year, compared to 49.6% that departed the state. That was enough to keep it atop the list of growth states.

Among other states that gained residents, Florida ranked second after Texas for the third consecutive year. They were followed by North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, respectively.

California suffered the sharpest net loss of one-way movers for the fourth straight year. It was followed by Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey and Michigan, respectively.

While U-Haul did not specify the number of rentals, the report confirms trends in the most recent federal statistics.

According to the Census Bureau, roughly 342,000 more people left California than arrived in 2022. By comparison, Texas had a net gain of about 174,000 new residents that year.

Last month, the Census Bureau reported separately that the U.S. population grew by 1.6 million residents in 2023 as immigration surged back to pre-pandemic levels.

That report found a surge in people moving to the South accounted for 87% of the nation’s population growth or roughly 1.4 million people. It was also the only region of the country that grew steadily throughout the pandemic, the bureau noted.

The bureau estimated that 130,125,290 people lived in the nation’s most populous region last year. That included 706,266 new Southern residents who moved from other U.S. regions and nearly 500,000 immigrants from other countries.

According to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a network of conservative state lawmakers and investors that tracks domestic migration trends, the U-Haul report confirms that low taxes have made red states more attractive in recent years.

“Americans are voting with their feet by moving to states with more freedom and more opportunity,” Lee Schalk, the council’s vice president of policy, said Thursday. “It’s no surprise that taxpayer-friendly Texas, Florida, and North Carolina added the most new residents in 2023, while the population is declining in high-tax states California and Illinois.”